


Nameless

by MQAnon



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Death, M/M, Mind palaces, Murder, The Ravenstag makes an appearance too, abstract writing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 16:18:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1989543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MQAnon/pseuds/MQAnon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His hands are bloodied to the elbow, severe scarlet slowly thickening into a second skin above his flesh. Will breathes, and instantly his lungs are filled with the taste of rust, a fine smoke of spun shadows and shallow veins chasing its way through his body with each long, heavy breath</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

His hands are bloodied to the elbow, severe scarlet slowly thickening into a second skin above his flesh. Will breathes, and instantly his lungs are filled with the taste of rust, a fine smoke of spun shadows and shallow veins chasing its way through his body with each long, heavy breath. He gasps, staggers backwards and feels his back _thud_ into something solid, before rough bark scratches a discordant vinyl symphony along his fear-ridged spine.

He can’t _think_ , not now and not here, with a cooling corpse resting still and silent at his feet, life-blood flowing out in a silent cacophony of crimson lace over dead and dying leaves. It dances in visceral, cruel glory behind his eyelids, as if it only happened seconds ago; it did, it did only happen seconds ago, but already Will can feel himself retreating into the dark refuge of his mind, into the bone-cut palaces and forests of shattered mirrors on ancient antler trees that are his grace and downfall.

It is times like this that make him loathe his empathy, the way he is already reconstructing the scene, drawing on fallen, tumbled archives of old cases, long buried corpses and the killers he shared his mind with. It plays out like a movie broadcast across his neurons; how he had heard the soft crunch and rustle of footsteps, reached for the knife to find the polished smooth handle curve to meet his palm, turned and stabbed and twisted and sliced in a motion so clean and smooth that for a moment the blade seemed like liquid light in the air, before the arc of perfect cabochon ruby spheres ghosted after it, tracing the path it had cut over a backdrop of sepia and gold leaves.

Will walks back to his house in numb silence, curling into his bone-cut palaces and shutting them overhead as he attempts to block out the constant sensory input – the blood dripping slowly from his hands and onto his feet, the faint itch as it dries in pin-prick sprays across his face, obscuring his glasses with dull, tiny specks, and the malicious whispers that wind around the trees, reaching out and plucking at his skin. He opens the door with his elbow, reaches the sink and is quietly starting to wash his hands when his vision blurs and his stomach heaves, leaving him hunched over the sink and grasping at the rim with hands water-damp and bloodied pink.

When he is done, he washes his hands again. He scrubs at them until red blood becomes white flesh becomes pink skin, rubbed raw and tingling beneath the burning spray. He can still feel it, curling under his skin in a network of steel wires, tracing his nerves and mapping his veins as they sink into muscle and bone, leaving him a discordant network of open ends and closed thoughts. The dogs seem to pick up on his thoughts, the raging maelstrom of confusion and worry and sheer _terror_ bound by quicksilver rails behind the curved arch of his skull – they fall quiet, silent and still and lay down with dark, ever-loving eyes trained on Will.

He can still smell the blood on his face.

Will doesn’t know what to do, and that chills. Unthinkingly, he glances at the clock, and his mind instantly leaps between the time displayed by the needled hands and how old, similar times had gone.

He’ll see Hannibal. Hannibal – serial killer and cannibal that he is – will surely know what to do.

The drive to Hannibal’s office is long and silent, full of the moth-wing hum of the car and the acrid tang of ozone at the back of Will’s throat, resplendent in burned electricity and ancient cables. In the synaesthesia-warped landscape of his mind the bone palaces are slowly turning umber, cut through with amber shards hiding soprano-sharp mirrors to let in the clouded light of the antler-tree garden. He tries to make himself smaller in the seat of his car, hunches further into the thick, fleecy jacket he had zipped up over his blood-stained shirt. It smells of home and earth and dogs and everything warm and reliable, and he takes comfort in the soft fabric, countered as it is by the roughened planes of the zip’s old metal. In a way, he doesn’t want to leave the car – the darkness outside has turned it into a small bubble of reassuring warmth and faint light, where people can’t reach him and he can’t reach them, can’t inadvertently let them sneak and skitter their way into his head. But he has to, and as soon as his car is bathed in the sodium glow of the streetlamps he starts to slow down.

Except he has an appointment to make, to meet, and Will knows how rude it would be to be late.

He parks the car, climbs out, and unzips his jacket as he waits anxiously for Hannibal to open the door, and let him in. He didn’t mean to open it, to show off yet more splattered blood, but he can’t help it, grabbing and twisting at the tab of the zip as he waits, nerves sparkling ice-bright beneath the now-retreating steel wires. His mind feels incandescent, almost aflame, as the quicksilver rails bend and snap as Hannibal opens the door.

"Will," he says, and Will follows his dark eyes as they dart across his face, noting and remembering every dark spot of dried blood, marring Will’s smooth skin and clutching at his hair in harsh haemoglobin claws. Will has been beautiful before, but never like this – a fallen angel now with a mess a curls and broken halos, casting iridescent gold across his features and drawing the colour out of every spot of blood. He is gorgeous in flame and destruction, a tenor serenade of vengeance and death.

"I-," Will cuts off, finding himself unable to finish. He swallows, curls in on himself and hopes that the amber will leave, will let his bone palaces heal themselves soon. "Hannibal, I, I…" Again he cannot finish, and he feels tears reach to prickle at his eyeballs as his breath catches in a broken sob. "I killed someone, Hannibal…"

The words are a whisper, confession spoken into home-smelling fabric. He looks down, refusing to meet Hannibal’s eyes as he feels the man draw closer. Suddenly, he feels the warm weight of a hand on his shoulder and jerks away, only for it to settle again a moment later.

"Oh, Will…" Hannibal hums softly, applying soft pressure to the back of his scapula and ushering him into his office, "Oh, Will, mano numylėtinis Will." Will can hardly hear the words, still caught up in the storm of lace-like blood sprays on golden leaves that smother his thoughts, but he can pick out where Hannibal dips into Lithuanian, the words translating to twisted velvet wrapped around bone in his mind.

"I’m sorry…" he breathes out, leaning into the curve of Hannibal’s hand, not sitting down in the chair he is guided towards. "I’m sorry…"

"Will, sit down." Soft spoken to the nape of his neck, and Will feels warm breath ghosting over winter-chilled skin. He shakes his head – the contact is too reassuring, too comforting to break, though the faces in the mirrors are screaming at him to get away, get away, _you know what he is, Will!_

But he doesn’t, just waits until he hears a faint sigh and feels the pressure against his shoulder blade again. This time Hannibal guides him to a long, low leather couch upholstered in rich burgundy, letting him sit down before seating himself next to him, legs brushing gently and Hannibal’s hand still resting gently on Will’s shoulder. Unthinkingly, Will shuffles closer, letting himself rest against Hannibal’s side somewhat – there’s space on Hannibal’s other side, he notices. If he wants to, he can move away.

The psychiatrist doesn’t move though, but his hands rubs small circles into the tense muscles of Will’s back.

"Will," he says calmly, and this time Will lifts his head to look at him, to stare into unknowable eyes, "Tell me what happened."


	2. Chapter 2

A stag statue sits to one side of the room, frozen in eternal grace as subdued lighting casts a myriad of twisted shadows across the floor, turning what should be beautiful into a distorted contortion of its solid form, all long limbs chained in warped opal where dust motes catch what little sunlight there is left. Will never used to like the stag, finding it regally intimidating in singing gunmetal glory, but now, somehow, it’s become familiar, almost friendly, and he feels his mind calming, slowly returning to the crystal-cut clarity he had gained after leaving prison. He wipes his eyes, sits up a bit straighter, and from the corner of his eye he can see Hannibal start to smile. Their minds have never been closer than now, ghostly edges brushing and touching in this strange, heady dance of theirs, and Will absently clasps his hands together, thumb rubbing over smooth skin. He notices there’s still blood under his nails and yet more welling up from raw, skinned knuckles, vibrant carmine seeming duller in the quiet, sombre richness of Hannibal’s home.

Hannibal notices too.

Quietly, the older man lowers his hand from Will’s back – he could feel the muscles suddenly going slack and still, ceasing the static-ridden flickers of pain and worry they had been giving out before. “We’ll need to clean your hands,” he says, standing with effortless grace and waiting for Will to join him, “You can tell me what happened then.”

Will just nods, head still full somewhat of wire and cotton, and follows Hannibal through what seems to be a maze of meticulously planned rooms, each one a piece of art within itself. Numbly, he notes more statues, more paintings, all little things that bleed with wealth and sophistication, saturating the very air with an aura of richness, and soon they arrive in a small, dark-walled dining room, the heart of the room claimed by a vast oaken table.

Hannibal directs him to the end of it, pulling the chair out for him and seating himself near Will as soon as he has tucked himself up against the table, unable to shake off the spine-deep chill that pulses through his bones with every breath. He can feel it spiralling down his spine, full of sun-flares and old, dying stars, a dissonant mix of fears both old and new, and he tries to distract himself with the black-lacquered walls of the room, watching their raven-wing darkness and how they claim the light for their own.

"May I have your hand?" Will doesn’t jump at the unexpected question, lost as he was in his own thoughts, but his eyes flicker instantly to where his therapist sits adjacent to him, one broad hand outstretched and expression calm and neutral. He nods, fearing that any word might shatter his tongue, and lifts his hand to rest it atop Hannibal’s, the dull drum-beat of the pulse in the man’s wrist flooding the carved ivory walls within his thoughts with fire-warmth tones of soft graveyard music.

Hannibal’s hands are soft against his own, skilled surgeon’s fingers – _killer’s fingers_ \- pressing gently against the broken skin of his knuckles. His left hand is wrapped around Will’s wrist, and Will flexes his fingers slightly in his grasp, silently admiring the play of light on drying blood as Hannibal rolls up the sleeve of his shirt for him.

"I’ll get some water," he says, before walking off and leaving Will sitting calm and quiet at his table, flawless hard-wood gleaming a serenade of oaken tones beneath amber-white lights. Will examines his hands as he waits, and is just about to prod at the broken, bloodied skin when Hannibal returns, carrying a porcelain basin of warm, lightly steaming water. In Will’s headspace it sings in treble, resonating with the soft, burnt-brown bass of the varnished wood beneath it and wrapping the air in short-lived clouds of steam. Like the stag statue this too is soothing, and the wire in his mind recedes further, leaving the landscape almost entirely his own. Once again, Hannibal reaches for his hand, but this time Will doesn’t wait for a question before he gives it to him, already missing the warmth and dirge it had added to the concerto in his mind. For a moment there is silence, unbroken by the feather-like rustling of clothes as Hannibal twists and turns Will’s hand, inspecting every angle of it; the sharp-creased skin where the hilt had pressed into his palm, the medley of blood pressed like kisses to his knuckles. Then he tuts, and the silence is broken.

"Oh, brangiausias," he says quietly, the velveteen words adding yet another layer to the welling music. Once again, Will picks up on the words – not English, clearly. They are too smooth, too flowing to be the harsh and grating English Will grew up with. Temporarily forgetting himself, he attempts to repeat them, croaking a rough approximating around a throat dry and framed by fear.

"Brang..gasus?" he manages, and sees a smile cross Hannibal’s face. He nods, now beginning to moving Will’s hand to the basin – the warm water stings, and he pulls in a sharp hiss of air between his teeth before slowly relaxing again, starting to cautiously move his fingers only to have Hannibal hold them in a firm but gentle grip. Will frowns curiously, his spare hand flexing against his denim-clad leg. "What does it mean?" he asks, and something in him _sings_ as Hannibal smiles again. He wants to tell whatever’s singing to fall quiet, to fly because _Hannibal is dangerous, he’s dangerous and you know this!_

"It’s an affectionate term from my home country." Said with a smile, another smile, settling warmth and reassurance within his bones. "I find sometimes that words in one language cannot convey their true meaning, and so we must substitute them for something better suited."

"Lithuanian?" Will is curious now, but any answer he expected or wanted doesn’t come. Instead, Hannibal just massages the joints within his fingers, pausing briefly to pick up a small flannel from beside the bowl, before he speaks again.

"Will, why don’t you tell me what happened?" he asks, and the words are accompanied with a barely-there press to the centre of his palm, one that perfectly maps the shape and curve of the knives hilt. _Muscle memory._ And then his mind is throwing up the bone and ivory palaces of protection, sloping walls carved with a thousand eternally shifting patterns and designs, each and every one of them his. This is the only place where he has ever found solitude, where not even the killers can find him. But now it is cut open, ragged daylight grasping at the rough edges. Will picks himself up, slides through, and he is in the garden once again.

His mind is full of shattered mirrors, each twisted and dancing on a thread of ancient opalite silver, filling his skull with the soft whispers and chimes of sharpened edges. He picks his way through them with a precision only he knows, bare feet stepping past shards fallen from trees of weathered bone.

None of the mirrors reflect properly – each shows something entirely different, but Will knows this landscape, and it takes him mere seconds to locate the right shard, to let it slice his skin and bleed him dry before hurling into the mind of the killer.

His mind.

The journey, as always, is accompanied by the background hum of the golden metronome, pulling him back to the forest behind his house and drowning out the perfect, flawless symphony Hannibal’s home had constructed for him. Around him, trees spiral upwards and snows fall and melt and fall again before settling on the gravel crunch of fallen leaves, stabilising and settling before the actors are added. For the first time though Will is not an actor, a participant, himself; instead he stands to one side, separate, as he lets his thoughts flow.

"I hear the man approach from behind, the fall leaves making his footsteps loud and clear. He has already seen me, but he has not seen the knife I am holding." In the mind scene, a man with features wiped slate-blank approaches his still form. Will wants to look away, but he can’t. He knows what happens next. He knows the script to this part of the story.

"I wait and listen for my prey to approach – he doesn’t understand what causes me to stay so still, but he is not suspicious either. Not until he sees the knife in my hand." Will watches himself turn, face calm and eyes curiously blank, as if whatever consciousness normally inhabited his brain had fled, giving rise to an empire of silken cobwebs and dark-feathered winds. The other man – _his prey_ – says something, but the sounds are muffled and the words unintelligible and meaningless, no more than unimportant violin whispers unknowingly trying to evade an imminent demise.

As he watches himself approach, his prey starts to step back, but by then Will is before him, one hand reaching out and curling around the back of his prey’s throat like a lover. He pulls him close, lifts the knife, and watches for a second as broken lightbeams twist along the blades edge, perfection in a sinuous storm of riotous light.

"My prey struggles but that just makes me pull him closer. I can feel his breath on my neck. He lifts his arms to try and fight me off, but he is not nearly strong enough – I am the predator and _he_ the prey.” He can taste the fear even from here, sharp cerulean hanging heavy in the air like pin-sharp mist and coating the back of the throat in screaming radiance, at once godly and entirely sinful. Now, reliving the scene, Will can only stand to one side as molten, liquid fire courses through his veins, wild pleasure and exhilaration engulfing him like a drug. This moment, the predetermined struggle of predator and prey is unbound and unrestrained and vibrant in cyanide siren screams and lightning-capped crescendos, and now Will never, _ever,_ wants it to end.

Will watches himself look up, align the knife, and then in one swift, unwavering motion, it is done. The blood arcs in violent glory and grace, falling around them as the prey’s started shout is cut short, filled and drowned with rich, pulsing blood. He pulls the knife back, tugs the prey closer and slips down enough to be eye-level with the gaping mouth he had left, and then lifts they blade to drive it up through the soft skin of his prey’s neck. Blood soars to dust his face in claret flecks, touching his lips where they are drawn back into a feral smile, eyes wide and burning with life and power. Behind him, he feels a soft puff of breath, and knows his ravenstag is with him too.

Dimly, Will can see past the forest and the savage pleasure of the kill, to where he can feel cooling water and warm fingers brushing against his hand, but the fingers are slowing, stopping, and Hannibal now is watching him and only him, as his face smooths into a replica of the grin he wore in the forest, still soaring and chasing the soprano gold grandeur of the kill. His kill. He can feel the hummingbird beat of his heart behind the cage of his ribs, and as his prey falls to the floor, carpeted in the vibrancy of death, he slips from the mirror and back into his own, physical skin.

Slowly, his heart calms, but Hannibal doesn’t stop staring at him, face flushed and pupils burst wide as he gazes. Not wanting to break the peace, Will gently moves his fingers against Hannibal’s palm, and instantly the older man gives a quiet cough and crosses his legs beneath the table, thigh brushing briefly against Will’s. He seems to bite his lip and hold his breath for the ghost of a second, then lets it out in a faintly shuddering sigh, saturating the room with a blend of old oak and fine, heady wines that spiral together and twist through ivory carved cracks bound with the remnants of quicksilver, lodging themselves behind Will’s skull. His fingers seem to grasp at Will’s wrist like a lifeline as he lifts his hand from the water, skin now untainted by rusting blood.

"And how…did that makes you feel?" Hannibal asks eventually, his breathing still short and laced with something akin to adoration as he locates a reel of soft white bandage.

"…Godlike," Will answers, licking his lips slightly as he thinks. "Powerful." A beat, and then one more word, no more than half a breath of air behind it as he speaks. "Aroused…" Once again Hannibal seems to hold his breath, eyes lowering and focusing on the bandage until oxygen chases out the old gases lurking in his lungs. He starts to wrap the bandage around Will’s knuckles, still holding his fingers with his free hand, which Will can feel shaking faintly against his skin.

"I once heard someone say that the most exciting thing in life was ending someone else’s," Will adds, trying to keep his voice level and calm as Hannibal lifts and moves his hands, treating them as if they were made of fine, frozen glass instead of strong muscle and bone. The act is surprisingly intimate, and Will finds himself having to adjust his own position in the chair, remnants of his kill still pounding in his veins. "I didn’t dwell on it at the time, but now…now I know what they mean…"

"It is an act that is normally only reserved for Gods," Hannibal replies quietly, briefly releasing Will’s hand to trim the bandage and tie it up neatly, running a thumb over the layers of clinical, sterile white. Moving slowly, he takes Will’s hand in both of his own and lifts it, eyes shining bright as fevered stars. "Dievai, kaip jūs ir aš," he whispers, and bends his head to kiss Will’s fingertips, one by one.


End file.
